Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson makes his comeback in 2013

If you check your calendar, 2013 is the year of the snake. But at the movies, at least in the early going, it’s the year of the Rock.

Fans of wrestler-turned-actor Wayne “The Rock” Johnson have a chance to see him on the big screen once a month in February, March and April, and the bulky thespian has a slew of future projects lined up as well.

Feb. 22 brings Snitch, in which Johnson plays the aggrieved father of a young man who is about to be put away on drug charges. “I just want to help my son,” he tells a hard-hearted prosecutor (Susan Sarandon) in the film’s trailer. And when his son won’t help the state make arrests in return for a lighter sentence, Dad goes one step further: “What if I did it for him?”

Cut to shady drug deals, gunfights and exploding cars — and to Johnson avowing: “There is no way I am going to let either side dictate our fates.”

Coming March 29 — though it was originally scheduled for release last summer — is G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Johnson joins the Joes for the sequel to the 2009 original; that’s if you can call something based on a 1960s toy and subsequent comics and TV series “original.” Also new to this one is Bruce Willis as Joe Colton.

Cut to shady weapons deals, gunfights and exploding cars — and to Johnson intoning: “There’s only one man could authorize a strike like that — and I voted for him.”

April 26 brings Pain & Gain, with Johnson as an ex-con recruited by a current one, played by Mark Wahlberg. Johnson’s character has a keen grasp of the law, telling Wahlberg: “You can’t just kidnap a guy and take his things. That’s so illegal.” Said guy is played by Tony Shalhoub, but after the kidnapping and theft, he hires Ed Harris to set things straight — or at least crooked in the way they used to be.

Johnson’s character has a pacifist streak. “We go through with this, nobody gets hurts, right?” he asks, and later: “You said no violence: I cannot kill.” But fear not — there are still plenty of shady dealings, gunfights and exploding cars, including the classic where three guys walk away from said car in slow motion, and don’t look back.

No trailers yet for Johnson’s other two confirmed 2012 releases, but given that one (Empire State) is about two friends who plan to rob an armoured car depository, and the other is called The Fast and the Furious 6, we can be fairly certain that shady things, bullet-y things and exploding-car things will continue to feature prominently.